


Rue

by Eavenne



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Angst, Angst and Feels, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Moving On, Nyotalia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-02
Updated: 2018-08-02
Packaged: 2019-06-20 16:00:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,328
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15537807
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eavenne/pseuds/Eavenne
Summary: Adelheid's little brother died violently in front of her.It's hard to move on. Yet, Françoise is there, and maybe everything will get better.





	Rue

**Author's Note:**

> Character names:
> 
> M! Liechtenstein = Noah   
> F! Switzerland = Adelheid (Heidi)  
> F! France = Françoise  
> F! Austria = Anneliese 
> 
> Enjoy!

The world is a sea of white flowers. 

A tug. Noah’s small hands pull at her long hair, expertly weaving it into a braid. “Just a little longer, sister,” he says. “So just wait awhile, okay?”

She smiles, gazes at the flowers bobbing in the warm breeze, and keeps still; all at once the air blossoms with birdsong, bursting with the sweet scent of spring.

It’s the most beautiful thing she’s ever seen.

He chuckles. “When I grow up, I’m going to be a hairdresser. Mom and Dad might not approve, but with you around, they’re basically all set for retirement.”

“Noah,” she begins, but suddenly his hands freeze and the sky darkens and everything is wrong, wrong, wrong, and when she whips around there’s a gaping hole in his chest and –

“But I’m never going to grow up.” 

And she tries to scream, to reach out to him and save him but it’s too late and the earth is splitting and swallowing him whole and she can’t –

She wakes up.

\---

The hairdresser frowns. “Are you sure, mademoiselle? Your hair is lovely, and – ”

“Chop it all off.” Her voice cracks as she speaks, and Adelheid looks away, avoiding the other woman’s intent gaze. She hopes that she doesn’t look like she’s on the verge of tears. 

A sigh. The hairdresser bends slightly, and gathers Adelheid’s hair in her hand. “Well. If you’re set on it, I suppose I’ll have to oblige.” She pauses. “My name is Françoise, by the way. Françoise Bonnefoy. Pleased to make your acquaintance.”

Adelheid looks at the mirror before her, takes in the woman’s deep blue eyes and elegant bun, and doesn’t have anything to say. In the corner of her eye she sees a little boy walk into the shop with his mother, and her mind swirls with a desperate cry – don’t think about it, don’t think about it – and her hands tighten on her pants, twisting the fabric, dampening it with cold sweat –

“Are you alright?” 

It’s the hairdresser. Before Adelheid can react, a warm hand settles itself on her shoulder. 

She jerks away. “I’m fine,” she says. “Please just cut my hair off.” Perhaps she should’ve done it herself, alone at home, but her hands are shaking and there’s no way that she’d be able to do a proper job. And though she feels terrible, Adelheid won’t allow herself to look the part. 

Not for her little brother’s funeral, anyway.

The hairdresser frowns. “If you say so,” she says. Another pause. “Anyway, telling me to get rid of your hair is one thing, but I still need to know how much you want me to chop off. So, what do you think of…”

\---

She wakes up, sees the gun on her bedside table, and takes a breath.

Oh, she thinks, I’m still alive. 

It doesn’t make sense. Noah has always been the better person – sweet, kind, endlessly selfless, endlessly giving – but he’s dead, dead and gone, and she’s still here.

Her whole family is dead, but she’s still here.

\---

She meets her hairdresser at a college lecture.

The woman looks at her, and blinks. “Oh, bonjour,” she says. “You’re the person who rushed in and demanded that I chop off her hair, right?”

Adelheid reddens, and doesn’t say a word. 

A smile. “I work part-time there,” the woman says. She leans back, and the plastic lecture chair squeaks at the movement. “And I don’t think you registered anything that I said to you back there, so I’ll re-introduce myself. Greetings, mademoiselle! My name is Françoise, Françoise Bonnefoy. I’m twenty-one. What’s your name?”

Adelheid shifts in her seat, widening the gap between them. “Adelheid Zwingli.”

All around them, people talk about silly, unimportant things, buzzing genially, laughing in gleeful anonymity – a facelessness that Adelheid knows she’s lost when Françoise says, “Wait, you have the same surname as the little boy who passed away. Did you know him?”

Suddenly the buzzing surges to a roar. No, no, I don’t, Adelheid wants to shout, but she know she’s already lost the fight – by now, Françoise must have connected the dots, and realised that she’s –

“Hey.” 

She can’t breathe.

“Calm down,” she hears Françoise say. “Look at me. It’s okay.”

It’s not, though, Adelheid thinks, but Françoise moves closer and startles her into looking up. There’s a shifting worry in the woman’s eyes – Adelheid supposes that she must have shocked the other woman. 

Oh, she thinks, I’ve screwed up again.

“Listen – ” Françoise begins, but the lecture begins, silencing her. 

And when it’s all over, Adelheid leaves before Françoise has a chance to speak again. 

\---

“My condolences.”

Adelheid doesn’t reply.

On the other side of the line, Adelheid hears Anneliese sigh. “Are you alright?” A pause. “Heidi?”

It’s been a long time since she’s heard that nickname. It’s been a long time since she’s heard Anneliese’s voice, for it’s been a long time since they were children together. People lose each other, and find themselves, and lose each other again…and one fine day they realise that they don’t know anything about each other anymore. 

She stares at the floor. “I’m fine,” she says. If she keeps saying that, perhaps she’ll be able to convince herself that it’s true.

Silence.

Anneliese doesn’t seem to buy it. “I know you’re tough,” she begins, “but you were close to Noah, and – ”

“I’ll talk to you later.”

She hangs up. 

Now she’s alone again. Adelheid sways where she stands, and leans on the wall with a gasp. No, she thinks, I’m not going to cry. I’m not going to cry. Don’t think about it. Don’t think about it.

If she doesn’t let herself grieve, maybe the pain will go away.

\---

They meet again.

There’s an odd look in Françoise’s eyes, which she tries to mask with a smile. “Bonjour,” she says, tucking a loose strand of hair behind her ear. “How are you?”

Adelheid eyes her cautiously. “Fine. How are you?”

“Surviving.”

They don’t look at each other. 

Then all of a sudden Françoise launches into a speech about their coursework, as if it’s the most interesting thing in the world. Her voice dips up and down, dances from note to note, flutters gracefully in her throat – it’s a musical voice, a gleaming flute, and Adelheid can’t help but listen intently. 

For a few minutes, that voice drives Adelheid to complete, blissful distraction.

Then the moment ends, and Françoise looks at her and says, “And that’s why I think our understanding of the world is limited,” and Adelheid doesn’t understand anything at all, except that she wants to fall under that spell just one more time.

\---

She raises the gun.

Her hands tremble, and she doesn’t want to think and she doesn’t want to feel anything but she can’t stop herself, and her fingers close on the handle even as she holds it far, far away from her body. She isn’t aiming at anything, but her heart pounds in her chest and her head fills with static and suddenly she’s back there, back in her nightmares, and her brother is staring at her wide-eyed as the robber –

The shot echoes in the room, drowns her ears with the sound of it, and she’s back there, back there again, and everything is real before her eyes and the blood is slick under her fingers and why wasn’t she quick enough, why wasn’t she able to shoot that man before he – killed –

She gasps for breath, but can’t breathe. Please, she tries to scream, I don’t want to die, I don’t want to die – but all she can manage are shuddering sobs as she sinks to the floor and draws her knees to her face and lets the gun fall. 

She’s shaking, but she can’t move.

\---

The day of the funeral slowly draws near.

Adelheid tries not to think about it. She goes to class, sits through lectures, and tries not to think about anything. Françoise is there, filling the room with her beautiful voice, and Adelheid does her best to focus on that. It’s her only lifeline.

Somehow, she’s been spending more and more time with Françoise. Often, the other woman will invite her to lunch, or call her – they’d eventually exchanged phone numbers – and go on and on about something or the other. 

Sometimes she wonders why Françoise bothered to befriend her. There isn’t much to Adelheid, after all; there’s nothing special about her, nothing unique, nothing attractive or exciting or especially interesting. 

And she doesn’t have anything to say. Any sound she makes is in response to a question from Françoise – otherwise, Adelheid is content with silence. Perhaps it isn’t normal for her – according to Anneliese, she isn’t acting like herself – but then Adelheid hasn’t felt like herself since her parents died, and now her brother, the only person in the world whom she still loves, is gone –

Adelheid doesn’t know if she should care. Somehow, nothing really matters anymore. 

She doesn’t have much else to lose.

\---

People stream by.

She doesn’t know how many times people apologise for her loss – slowly, gradually, the “I’m sorry”s and “I can’t imagine what you must be going through”s lose whatever sincerity they might have originally had; the words crumble distantly into the cool, empty air. 

She tries not to look at the coffin. The person inside isn’t her brother anymore – he’s dead, dead and gone, and only a shell remains. There’s no use in mourning what’s already been lost; there’s no use in reaching out for someone who won’t come back. 

Person after person, eulogy after eulogy – Adelheid tunes them out, for she already knows how kind her brother was. She doesn’t need to hear it from anyone else. She doesn’t want to hear it from anyone else. 

When everyone’s done talking, they walk to the graveyard. “Are you alright?” someone whispers – Adelheid thinks it’s her aunt – and she doesn’t respond. Then the coffin is lowered into the grave and she knows that she’ll never see her brother again, but only a profound numbness lingers in her chest. 

She wonders why.

\---

She takes a pill, and falls asleep.

The next day Adelheid wakes up and dresses and heads to college. The single thing she’s aware of is an all-consuming emptiness. It eats at her. Nothing else remains.

Françoise meets her on the way there. “How are you?” she asks, her face drawn strangely tight. It’s almost as though she knows that Adelheid had just buried her little brother.

“I’m fine.”

Though she frowns, Françoise doesn’t pursue the subject. 

They walk. The usual morning crowd has thinned, and Françoise leads the way, navigating the streets with easy familiarity as Adelheid trails silently behind. With nothing to focus on, her eyes slide from passer-by to passer-by. There, a man speaks on his phone while clutching a briefcase; there, a mother leads a small girl; there, a little boy –

“So that’s where you’ve been!” The girl’s voice, pitchy with youth, slices through the drowsy air. Marching up to the boy, she takes his hand. Though she looks at him sternly, he giggles in response. 

“This isn’t the right way!” she exclaims. “Mother’s back over there. Jeez, you’re such a troublesome little brother.”

Adelheid’s eyes widen.

Hand in hand, the pair run back to a kind-faced woman who pats them on the head, laughing softly as she playfully scolds the little boy – then, the man on the phone walks back to his family, and sighs at their antics.

Adelheid freezes. All of a sudden she can’t move and then she’s back there again, back there with the gun and the blood and the police sirens and the hospital and the guilt, and he’s there, lying on her lap, bleeding and bleeding and her hands are covered with his blood and –

She thinks someone steps before her and calls her name, but the world blurs before her eyes and she can’t see anything. “I’m sorry,” she sobs, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, so please just – please just bring him back, please, please, I’ll do anything, I promise, I – ”

Something warm closes over her body.

Françoise embraces her tightly. “It’s okay,” she murmurs. “Shh. It’s going to be okay.”

“I’m sorry – ”

“It’s not your fault.”

She cries into Françoise’s shoulder, and the world slowly fades away.

\---

They don’t go to college that day.

“I’ve, uh, been meaning to tell you,” says Françoise, watching Adelheid from across the café table with concern, “that I knew your brother.”

Oh, she thinks. That explains some things.

“He came to ask if he could work part-time at the hairdressing salon I work at,” continues Françoise. She sips at her drink. “They turned him down, of course, due to his age, but he had clear passion for hairdressing, so he was allowed to hang around. Everyone was really fond of him. We taught him some…tricks of the trade, you know? There was even some talk of eventually hiring him as a part-timer once he came of age.”

Adelheid blinks hard and looks away, but Françoise reaches out to take her hand. “And when he didn’t swing by one day, we were all worried sick, but we didn’t know how to contact him or anyone who knew him. And eventually we saw the newspaper article.”

Françoise stops speaking. She leans forward. 

“I’m sorry,” she says. 

It’s the most sincere apology that Adelheid thinks she’s heard. “Don't worry,” she replies, “It’s fine. I’m fine.” 

Françoise frowns. “Please stop saying that,” she says. “It’s blatantly untrue. And it’s okay, you know. You don’t have to be alright. No one expects you to be.”

Her hand tightens on her glass. “I’m – alone.” Adelheid doesn’t know what she’s saying. “No one expects anything of me, because – because there’s no one.” She pauses, glances away pointlessly, and shakes her head. “I’m sorry. I don’t know why I said that.” Her breaths quicken. “You can just ignore – ”

“No,” says Françoise.

Adelheid’s eyes widen.

“You have me.”


End file.
